Foundations of Comparative Politics

"The first edition of this book was published in 2006, before the financial crash of 2008, Obama's election in the USA, Trump's unexpected win in 2016, Brexit, the war in Syria, and the rapid rise of refugees and migrants all over the world. In 2006 many western countries were beginning to register a decline in voting, party identification and political trust but it was too soon to say whether these were temporary fluctuations or the onset of longer-term trends. Some of the large parties of the centre ground were losing support and minor parties were appearing on the scene, but few managed to overtake the weakened major ones. Separatist movements were active all over the world, often many different ones in the same country, but most were small, even tiny, and success was rare. The troubles in Northern Ireland had been calmed by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and Kosovo gained its independence two years later. Nationalist movements were active in Catalonia and Scotland but nowhere near their future strength. Green parties had gained a secure foothold in some parliaments but remained minor in most. Fifteen years after the Berlin Wall fell the new states and democracies of East Europe were still finding their way and it was difficult to know where they would end up. Populist movements and parties were strong in a few places, but even specialist scholars did not recognise what was about to happen to them. The 'Gilet Jaunes' (French protesters) had not taken to the streets in France nor had Extinction Rebellion made itself known across the world. There were many books and scholarly articles about grass-roots, electronic, direct and deliberative democracy, few about post-democracy, populism or democratic decline. Twitter was launched in March 2006, but new forms of communication typically produce false prophecies and some said there would be no demand for microblogging limited to 140 characters. Facebook was only two years old with barely more than a paltry five million users"--